Posts Tagged ‘fraud in the scientific community’

I have now gone from being merely skeptical of the global warming frenzy to being angry by the revelations that we have been defrauded by people who have manipulated data and stonewalled any critical analysis of their findings and who have had the unmitigated gall to call themselves scientists. I am angry because politicians and bureaucrats seem determined to forge ahead with policies that will do mortal damage our economies in spite of the information now becoming available that data was doctored in order to prove a predetermined hypothesis.

To add to all of this, after the e-mails out of East Anglia and just when the “scientists” and the global warming theorists were getting into their damage control mode attempting to explain that what the e-mails said meant something entirely different than what it sounded like, they were hit by a report from Russia that the temperature database from that country had been manipulated by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) to show greater warming in Russia that was actually the case.

From there we went to the circus in Copenhagen where demagogues such as Venezuala’s president Hugo Chavez received standing ovations for his attacks on capitalism and his arch-enemy the U.S.

Assembled world leaders cheered on Chavez Wednesday during his first, scheduled speech, a ringing attack on all things capitalist that earned him standing ovations from leaders of the Third World.

Chavez berated developed nations for creating an “imperial dictatorship” that rules the world and urging his audience to “fight against capitalism,” the “silent and terrible ghost” that was haunting the elegant conference chambers in the Danish capital.

“I promise I won’t talk more than others have talked this afternoon,” he said at the start of a rambling, 25-minute diatribe that outshot other speakers by a full 20 minutes. In the wide-ranging speech, he called capitalism the “road to hell” responsible for poverty, murder, AIDS — and even unfair climate agreements, the Toronto Star reported.

Over in Copenhagen, we have Robert Mugabe, perhaps the most brutal and corrupt despot in Africa, whose life’s work has been to destroy the once-prosperous country of Zimbabwe, lecturing the West on the “hypocrisy” of its position on climate change. (Zimbabwe doesn’t have to worry about greenhouse gas emissions, because, thanks to Mugane, its economy is in a state of collapse.) Update: Here’s Stephen Lewis talking about a new report on Mugabe’s use of rape as a weapon.

We have the government of China, which won’t allow its citizens free access to the Internet, complaining that the climate summit is “not transparent.”

We have Hugo Chavez, who took time off from shutting down Venezuela’s radio stations to fly to Denmark, complaining about western “dictatorship.” (If anyone back in Venezuela disagrees, he’ll toss them in jail).

And it goes on.

Of course we also have the patriotic Mayor of Toronto, David Miller, standing up for Canada – sorry, my mistake. You have David Miller slamming Canada by volunteering to accept a Fossil award in Canada’s name.

“Like most Canadians, I’m embarrassed … our government continues to be one of the biggest obstacles to reaching agreement,” Mr. Miller said as he accepted two “Fossil of the Day” awards on behalf of Canada last week.

Two other commentaries that are well worth reading.

As always, a well-written, thoughtful column by Rex Murphy, which says in part:

If the hard science of global warming, or at least as much of that emergent discipline that may be called hard science, is to be the factual and scientific fulcrum on which policies for the world’s energy are to be decided, then it logically follows that such science must be absolutely untainted. That it not be infused with the activist spirit, that advocacy follows the science, not that science seeks to comport with advocacy. It is really impossible to read some of those e-mails and not to take, from both their tone and their substance, that the necessary neutrality and disinterest of true scientific enterprise – the essential virtues of science – have been severely disobliged.

Has the science been tainted, is the question of our time. Has the authority and prestige of scientific practice been invoked at the very moment when its methods – its practice – has been, to any degree, corrupted or degraded? This would be a reasonable question – and let me stress it is still a question – even if the project or subject was one of far less consequence and scope than the planet’s climate and its economic practice.

That question is not being asked with the rigour we should expect. There is something about the great cause of global warming that tends to disarm scrutiny, to tamp down the normal reflexes of tough questioning and investigation that the press brings to every other arena. The great conference at Copenhagen seems to have whistled by the quite momentous challenge that the East Anglia e-mails presents to the centrality of the claims made by the global warming cause. Lots of fossil-of-the-day moments – not many hard press conferences.

Then another by Roger J. Simon on Pajamas Media, who was in Copenhagen for the conference and who observes that the conference was less about CO2 reduction than about moving power into the hands of the UN.

It will say the same of Copenhagen, no doubt. At least the presence of the various despots (Chavez, Mugabe, the re-upped A-jad, etc.) was not as damaging this time. It was more of sideshow, compared to the true objective of COP15 – the cementing of UN bureaucratic power under the guise of CO2 regulation. That was why the Climategate revelations were particularly poorly timed for the United Nations. Yes, they were largely ignored or dismissed at press conferences, but they were an overwhelming presence about which many were aware.

But much of the reality of the conference seemed to me to be an opportunity for third world countries to try and extract money from the west to use for their own purposes. This comment from a US agricultural reperesentative at the conference had the same take on the proceedings.

“To me, it appeared like they wanted our money to fix the problems they have that didn’t necessarily have anything to do with greenhouse gases or climate change,” he says. “It’s just the fact that they wanted to redistribute the wealth. They wanted our dollars because we were the ‘rich Americans’.”

I think that pretty much sums it up: redistribution of wealth. That’s the plan.